Perry Farrell Talks About New Jane’s Addiction Album

Perry Farrell recently spoke with Rolling Stone about a brand new Jane’s Addiction album that he has been preparing for.

He has been in bed as a result of surgery but he says the time “holed up” has allowed him to write over sixty new songs. He plans to begin working on the follow-up to 2011’s The Great Escape Artist as soon as January.

He said: “I haven’t written this much or been this prolific since I started when I was in my 20s. It’s been coming out fantastic. I’m super excited. Everything will really start to jell and come together probably this time next year.“

He said earlier this year that he wanted to continue the themes of escapism for the next album. But now he has changed his mind as the new songs are “a nightmare, a fairy tale, all mixed in one”. He added: “It’s not going to be [a continuation of] The Great Escape Artist. I had thought that it would be a great idea. However, I just came up with this other twist to doing the next record. At this point I want to start fresh with a fresh angle.“

He admitted that the last album, their first in almost a decade, wasn’t as big as he hoped it would be. He said: “It didn’t make a big enough splash. If it would have made a bigger splash I would have continued [its themes].“

He also said that he does want to put a stronger emphasis on theatricality for live shows. He said: “I’m going to bring that to another level. I want to do things and have experiences for the audience that they’ve never had. I want them to go home and tell people ‘You have to go and see them.’“

Farrell also talked about Jane’s Addiction’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”, which made it onto the most recent Sons of Anarchy soundtrack collection. The song was previously covered by the band on their 1987 debut live album. He added: “I thought I was gonna go in and basically do a rehash of what we’d done [in the past]. But I was wrong. There’s a strange minor sadness to it, where the devil is admitting that he’s somehow in pain over the things that he does. There are times when I feel like I understand the devil very well.“